Authors: Kevin O'Brien
The Last Victim (8 page)
With a grin, he turned and watched her hurry into the high school. She ducked into the same side door Fuller Sterns had used just a few minutes before.
“Fuller?”
Bridget stood alone in the darkened, windowless corridor. Behind her was a display case full of dusty old trophies and team photos of young men who were now either middle-aged or dead. In front of her were the restrooms—along with the janitor’s closet.
The janitor’s son was on David’s Little League team. Whenever a game was held at the high school playfield, the janitor always unlocked the side door so people could use the bathrooms. But he never switched on the hallway overhead lights. Bridget wasn’t sure if it was to save electricity or discourage people from abusing his open restroom policy. Whatever the janitor’s reason, it made for a gloomy, slightly creepy corridor. The brightly lit washroom always seemed so stark and white in contrast to that dim hallway.
Bridget squinted as she opened the door to the boys’ room. “Fuller? Are you in here?” she called, not stepping over the threshold. There was no response, only a steady hum from one of the pipes.
She backed away from the doorway. Had Fuller misunderstood when she asked him to meet her here?
No other door to the high school was open. This was the only way in. The three classrooms and the door at the end of this corridor were usually locked. Where else could he be?
She couldn’t have been more than five minutes with that woman and her mother. She wondered if Fuller had grown impatient waiting. Or had something happened to him?
“Fuller?” she called again. This time, her voice echoed in the vacant, dark hallway.
She opened the door to the girls’ room and stepped inside. Her footsteps clicked on the tiled floor. “Fuller? You in here?” she whispered. Nothing. It was a long shot anyway.
With a sigh, Bridget turned and started out of the restroom. She saw a shadow sweep across the wall—then a man, reflected in the glass of the display case.
She gasped, then swiveled toward the exit. Fuller was staring at her. For a moment, his face was in the shadows.
“Bridget?”
A hand over her heart, she caught her breath. “God, you scared the hell out of me.”
“I figured you’d be a while with those gasbags, so I stepped out for a smoke,” he explained. She could smell the cigarette smoke on him as he stepped toward her. He grinned, the same goofy smile he had back in high school. “A little jumpy, huh? Well, so am I. Like I started to tell you, I have a stalker too. And I’m not on TV, I don’t have any relatives running for senator, and I’m not pretty. So I’ll be damned if I know why this creep is following me around or what he wants.”
“He isn’t, by any chance, the same dark-haired man I pointed out to you at Olivia’s wake, is he?”
Leaning against the display case, Fuller shrugged. “I’m not sure. I still haven’t gotten a good look at the guy. But he’s pulled the same shit on me that he’s pulling on you, peeking inside my house at night. I called the police on him, but he was gone by the time they showed up. Cops didn’t do much, useless as tits on a bull. Of course, I couldn’t give them much to go on with a description of this joker. All I could see was that he was a tall white guy, wearing one of those leather, y’know, bomber jackets.”
“The man outside my house the night before last was wearing a bomber jacket,” Bridget murmured.
“Yeah? Well, when this clown shows up again, I’ll be ready for him. I own a gun, a forty-five.”
“When did you first notice this stalker?”
“Hmmm, I thought I saw someone in my backyard the day I was supposed to meet Olivia the second time.”
“You mean, the day after she shot herself?” Bridget asked.
He nodded glumly. “Yeah. So—does Brad have someone tailing his ass? I mean, you and I both have this guy shadowing us, maybe he’s watching Brad too. Maybe he’s stalking each one of us who were at Gorman’s Creek. We should track down Cheryl Blume and see if someone’s following her around too.”
“Is that why you’re trying to get in touch with Brad—to find out whether or not someone’s been following him?” Bridget frowned at her old high school classmate. “Gorman’s Creek was over twenty years ago. Why in the world would someone be stalking us
now
—after all this time?”
now
—after all this time?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Olivia stirred something up. Olivia told me she had ‘information to sell.’ Well, Brad’s loaded. Olivia knew that. She didn’t say anything to me. But I’m wondering if she gave the same sales pitch to Brad. Maybe she told him what she didn’t have a chance to tell me. I forked over five grand for that scoop. I’d like to know what she found out. Maybe it’ll mean I could sleep a little better at night.”
“Believe me,” Bridget said, “if Olivia met with Brad—or if he had any new information about Gorman’s Creek—my brother would have told me.”
“Are you sure?” Fuller pressed. “Could you ask him for me, please?”
She sighed. “All right. I’ll ask him tonight and get back to you, Fuller.”
Suddenly, the side door opened, and a shaft of light poured into the hall. A woman, holding her toddler daughter by the hand, paused in the doorway. She stared at them.
Bridget quickly grabbed Fuller’s hand and shook it. “Thanks so much. I’ll be sure to tell my brother that he has your support. It was nice meeting you.”
“Thanks,” Fuller said, a bit bewildered.
The woman and her daughter moved toward the restroom. Bridget smiled as she passed them in the corridor. She headed for the exit.
“That’s the lady who sang before Andy’s baseball game,” she heard the woman tell her daughter. “She’s on TV . . .”
In a daze, Bridget walked through the playfield’s parking lot, toward her car. Fuller had left shortly after they’d spoken inside the high school. She’d returned to her spot in the bleachers and watched David redeem himself by hitting a double in the second-to-last inning. Still, his team had lost—their final game of the season. But that didn’t stop them from going out for a post-game pizza. A teammate’s mother had promised to drive David home by six o’clock.
Eric was at an all-day birthday party. He was getting a ride home at five-thirty.
So Bridget was alone with her thoughts. She wondered what kind of “new information” Olivia had discovered about Gorman’s Creek. Or was that merely some sort of fake bait Olivia had used to lure Fuller, so she could snag five thousand dollars? Well, the bait certainly worked. Bridget suddenly thought of something that made her stop in her tracks. Why would someone who had just made herself an easy five thousand bucks decide to put a bullet in her head? And how many women committed suicide that way? Bridget wasn’t up on all the statistics, but she was pretty certain women usually chose pills, razor blades, or carbon monoxide over bullets when it came to taking their own lives.
All at once, a blast from a car horn made her jump. Bridget realized someone was honking at her to get out of the way. She gave a contrite wave and stepped aside.
Retreating to her car, Bridget opened the door and climbed behind the steering wheel. She sat there for a few moments, still lost in thought.
If Olivia had really uncovered something new about what had happened at Gorman’s Creek, apparently she’d decided to take the secret to her grave. Who was to say why she’d killed herself? Bridget hadn’t known Olivia very well—not even back in high school. Olivia was more Brad’s friend than hers. The same was true of the others at Gorman’s Creek. Technically, they were Brad’s friends.
As she sat alone in the parked car, Bridget thought of all the high school games she’d attended by herself, both home and away games, in which her twin brother was the star player. Football in the fall, and basketball, winter through spring. It wasn’t so much that Bridget was full of school spirit. She simply needed to be there for her brother. Most of the time, she drove to the games by herself, sat by herself, and went home by herself. Brad usually had some post-game party with his teammates and their girlfriends. He often asked Bridget to come along, but they weren’t her crowd. They merely tolerated her presence from time to time because she was Brad Corrigan’s twin sister. And Bridget, in turn, put up with them because they were her brother’s friends. Actually, most of them were jerks.
“They’re not jerks,” declared Kim, her best friend in high school. “They’re assholes—in jerks’ clothing.”
Kim Li was a chain-smoking, slightly punk Korean-American with a high IQ and a low tolerance for just about everyone else at McLaren High. Try as she did, Bridget could never persuade Kim to attend a game with her. Kim was one of the first girls at the school to put a primary-color streak in her hair—and a lot of people were shocked. Olivia Rankin once asked Bridget why she hung out with such a “freak.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess,” was Bridget’s response.
Bridget always felt like an outsider herself, someone on the fringe. She got the impression from her high school peers that her sole worth was wrapped up in being the twin sister of the most popular guy in their class. A lot of girls tried to be Bridget’s friend, but most of the time, they were merely using her to get close to Brad. She always saw through them early on.
But Kim didn’t care that much about Brad. “Oh, your brother’s gorgeous,” she said. “He’s an incredible athlete, very sweet, and smart as a whip. Plus he has a cute ass—as much as that grosses you out to hear it. Still, c’mon, you must know that just about every girl in the class—and a few guys too—would love to jump his bones. Maybe that’s why I’m not getting a case of thigh-sweats over him. The last thing in the world I want is to be like everyone else.”
Kim was the only true friend Bridget had. And in some ways, Bridget felt better off than her brother. Despite having a throng of friends, admirers, and hangers-on, Brad wasn’t particularly close to any of them. The most popular guy in class didn’t have a best friend. He used his popularity in a way that some people become generous with money. For biology class, he chose the class “fag,” Ricky Savan, as his lab partner, and people stopped picking on Ricky. At school functions, Brad often paired off with one of his far-less-popular classmates for an entire afternoon.
One of those chosen was Zachary Matthias, a likable “geek,” whose baby fat, bad glasses, and chipped, gray front tooth didn’t deter Kim from having a little crush on him. Brad had “bonded” with Zachary during a school picnic.
“I asked Zachary what your brother and he talked about,” Kim later told Bridget as the two girls walked home from school. “Zach said Brad basically ‘interviewed’ him the whole time. He said he was really flattered to have the attention of the ‘coolest guy in class’ for three hours, but he walked away from that picnic not knowing Brad Corrigan one bit better than before.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bridget asked indignantly.
Kim shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s implying that your brother is more interested in finding out what makes people tick than actually connecting with them. Why else would Brad choose to spend so much time in private powwows with so many class nobodies and also-rans? And I’m proud to count myself among them, I might add.”
Bridget figured Brad was merely trying to make them feel good about themselves. The most popular guy in class was showing interest in those people who didn’t quite fit in, and it must have made them feel special. Brad was a champion for the underdog, always trying to do good.
“I think Zach would rather have spent three hours at the picnic with
you
,” Kim said. “He’s got such a crush on you, Bridget. It’s so unfair, because you don’t even like him that much, and I think he’s really cute.”
you
,” Kim said. “He’s got such a crush on you, Bridget. It’s so unfair, because you don’t even like him that much, and I think he’s really cute.”
“Oh, I like him okay,” Bridget muttered, hugging her schoolbooks to her chest. But Zach Matthias wasn’t her type. Besides, she was in love with David Ahern. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, and brooding, he was a senior who hung around with Brad from time to time. Bridget got all tongue-tied and ditsy whenever he came over to the house. He wasn’t part of the pack who had latched on to Brad. David and Brad usually went off by themselves whenever they got together—hiking, swimming, long drives to Portland or along the Columbia River. Bridget didn’t know much about David, except that his mother had died when he was eleven. This, of course, endeared him to her even more. She pumped Brad about him. Typical of guys, Brad couldn’t tell her much about his friend: “Well, he’s just, y’know, a nice guy. Reads a lot, likes movies. He’s really interested in astronomy. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“He’s as gay as a maypole, and you’re totally wasting your time,” Kim maintained. She often spent her weekends with an aunt in Seattle, and had a lot of gay friends there. “I can read all the signs. He’s cute, dresses nice, and I see the way he sometimes looks at your brother—though obviously, you and Brad don’t see it. I highly recommend you get a crush on a guy who likes girls.”
But Bridget didn’t want to hear it. David barely knew she was alive, but she worshiped him. On a Friday morning in mid-October, when both their parents were out of town, Brad mentioned to Bridget that David Ahern was coming over to the house for pizza and a movie. And no, Brad didn’t mind if she wanted to join them. The Corrigans had a VCR, and David wanted to rent
On the Waterfront
. Bridget was ecstatic. She spent the afternoon in the library looking up
On the Waterfront
, so she could make all these intelligent statements about the movie: “Did you know that this picture won eight Oscars? This was Eva Marie Saint’s first movie. Did you know that it was shot in Hoboken, New Jersey? Have you ever been to New Jersey, David?”
On the Waterfront
. Bridget was ecstatic. She spent the afternoon in the library looking up
On the Waterfront
, so she could make all these intelligent statements about the movie: “Did you know that this picture won eight Oscars? This was Eva Marie Saint’s first movie. Did you know that it was shot in Hoboken, New Jersey? Have you ever been to New Jersey, David?”
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